Day 2

Happy belated easter!  At left is the easter dinner we made for the house. The residents have to take turns making dinner for each other.  On occasion of the holiday most of the house went out for a chinese dinner. Alisa, Patrick from Maine, and I opted out of the chinese food.  Patrick put it best when he said something like "if we don't spend money on chinese food, then we have more money to spend on beer." Exactly.  

You're looking at a plate of lentils, this amazing curried cabbage dish that Alisa and I have been making twice a day, and in the bowl is Beth Barden's tomato bisque recipe. It was a big hit and I made way too much for three people and continued to eat it the next day too.

Easter Sunday was hugely productive for us.  Most of saturday was spent re-arranging the mechanics of the piece to fit Wizard John's ideas.  He was right on.  One of his ideas concerned two holes in the diesel tank.  Apparently the tank, though empty, contained quite a bit of diesel fuel residue on the inside.  In order to contain that sludge for the sake of this lovely plot on land on which the piece is to stand, it was necessary to plug the holes.  Alisa's original plan was to weld covers on the holes.  This was potentially extremely dangerous as open flame and fuel fumes equals kaboom.  The Wizard had suggested that we simply fabricate wooden plugs.  It was ingeniously simple.  

Alisa made a very nice and clean one 

very quickly with power tools from some scrap oak.  I was really amazed by her ability to so effortlessly make something so accurately round and clean cut.  On the other hand, I was becoming painfully aware that it has been some 6 or 7 years since my foundations year of art school, which was the last time I used power tools to do anything other than cut a 2x4 in half or drive a screw to hang a picture.  Afraid to potentially destroy her nice power tools or my beautiful, beautiful hands, I stuck to a chisel and rasp and took an incredibly long time to make this funky, long stopper of my own.  It felt great to be able to add something to the piece, as minute as a detail as it may be.  At first I don't think she liked it, but my super funky plug grew on Alisa after a few hours. 

The second half of the workday was spent hoisting the tank into its position in the "wagon" to measure where we were to mount the bearing housing so that the thing would eventually spin when cranked.  We spent a long time discussing its mounting and both got into the idea of making a simple but elegant cut in the diagonal beam to help expose Alisa's beautiful S shaped ornament on the tank's side.  

We worked late into the night via halogen work lights mounted to the gantry's A frame, removing the tank 

from the hoists in its measurement position on the diagonal beam.  We had to drill a number of counter sinks and the ornamental cuts into the diagonal beams.  

We struggled for a time with THREE different jig saws, all property of the park.  One was totally inoperable, one was unable to lock its pitching mechanism, and the other did not support the single jig blade Alisa had in her truck bed full of supplies.  A trip to Tractor Supply was planned for the next day and we made a "grocery list" of required hardware, blade included.  We also had to track down an operable jig saw. 

We had a drink each and crashed around 2am, painfully aware of Monday's 8 am start time...